The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson is adapting Jonathan Coe’s satirical novel What a Carve Up! for Channel 4.

Published in 1994, the novel is an attack on the Thatcher era, based around a writer who is commissioned to produce a biography about a right-wing upper class British family obsessed with making money, often in dubious ways. As he becomes embroiled in the family’s secrets, they are murdered one by one in a series of bizarre scenarios.

The project is currently in development as a 4 x 60-minute series at indie Big Talk - the production company behind Free Agents, Black Books and Spaced - but it has yet to be formally commissioned by C4. Producer is Luke Alkin, exeutive producer is Kenton Allen and scripts were commissioned by C4 head of drama Liza Marshall. Coe is acting as a consultant.

Dyson is one of the four-man writing team on The League of Gentlemen, which he writes in partnership with Mark Gatiss. He is the only member of the team not to act in its various projects and was famously portrayed by Michael Sheen in movie spin-off The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse.

He also co-wrote BBC3 black comedy Funland, script edited BBC1’s The Armstrong and Miller Show and penned the Billy Goats Gruff episode of Hat Trick’s series of modern Fairy Tales for BBC1.

Coe’s novel was previously adapted for BBC Radio 4 by Reginald Perrin creator David Nobbs. The eight-part dramatisation was broadcast in 2005, the same year in which BBC2 broadcast a three-part adaptation of Coe’s later novel The Rotters’ Club.